Pine Knob Elementary’s Destination Imagination team had many things to worry about when it competed at Regionals.
Lack of imagination wasn’t one of them.
“Destination Imagination has the word ‘imagination’ in it, and I’m pretty familiar with that,” said team member Matthew Dargay. “I’m a creative person, and this is a bunch of extremely creative people here.”
He and his teammates Patrick Carlisle, Emily Comos, Symone Hamilton, Erica Parker, Nolan Stesney, and Emily Trombley, and Team Manager Mike Comos, won first place in their category and the Renaissance Award for creativity.
“It’s fun to learn new things,” Parker said. “I learned you need a lot of sportsmanship and team work ? that helps get things done quicker.”
“It was very fun, a good experience,” Stesney said.
“It was something I’ve never tried before, and I wanted to see what it was about,” said Carlisle. “It’s something I want to try again.”
Their category, “DI’ve Got a Secret,” required the team to incorporate an optical illusion into a skit, Carlisle said.
“Everyone came up with an optical illusion ? that was our homework,” he said. “Mine was a Dream Dot. You look at it for 40 seconds, and it turns pink.”
“Mine was, ‘Now you see it, now you don’t,'” Dargay said. “It was a bunch of crazy things.”
The team picked Parker’s illusion, an LP record disk painted black and white, designed to spin rapidly.
“You stare at it and it looks like it’s moving and changing colors, but it’s really not,” she said.
Their skit:
“Aliens from outer space land on Earth, in an equatorial rain forest,” Hamilton said. “The secret is monkees can talk.”
The aliens are greeted by scientists from the Space Investigatory Agency, as well as the talking monkees. The space ship’s power source is Parker’s disc.
“They put the fuel source in, and when the disc turns color, that means it’s fueling,” Hamilton said.
Sixteen teams competed in their category at the Regional Tournament March 8 at Waterford Mott. They will compete at State Finals at Central Michigan University April 19.
“I thought it was a good experience, something fun to do,” Trombley said.
“Our coaches were very friendly ? if we mess up, they tell us how to fix it right away,” Comos said.
Destination Imagination gives students’ a chance to compete aside from sports, Dargay said.
“We’ve never been to state for anything before,” he said. “We’ve been called ‘nerds,’ but it all pays off.”